Robert Bolt Biography (1924-1995)

Born August 15, 1924, in Sale, Manchester, England; died February 20, 1995, in Hampshire, England. Educator, film director, screenwriter, and playwright.Bolt was a playwright and screenwriter whose talent for conveying human dramas against broad historical backdrops earned him critical and popular acclaim.His movie scripts for Dr. Zhivago and A Man for All Seasons won him successive Academy Awards in 1965 and 1966. A graduate of the University of Manchester, Bolt worked as a schoolteacher for several years while trying his hand atwriting. He apprenticed as a radio dramatist, but it was the success of his stageplay Flowering Cherry, performed in London in 1958, that allowed him to write full time. Unlike some of his more innovative playwriting contemporaries, Bolt favored traditional plays with elegant language and discernable structure. In 1960 the dramatist had a resounding London success with his play A Man for All Seasons; this story of Lord Chancellor of England Sir Thomas More,who was executed by King Henry VIII for his loyalty to the church, enjoyed along Broadway run, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and a Tony in1962, and went on to numerous revivals. Bolt's solid craftsmanship and traditionalism also served him well in Hollywood: his long partnership with film director David Lean began when the playwright was asked to polish (and subsequently rewrite) the script for the epic Lawrence of Arabia; in cooperation withLean, Bolt wrote the screenplays for Boris Pasternak's sweeping saga of theRussian Revolution, Dr. Zhivago, and his own Ryan's Daughter. Though strickenby a paralyzing stroke in 1979, Bolt continued to write for the stage, motion pictures, and television. His film drama The Mission, filmed by Roland Joffe and set in colonial South America, won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986.